This project presented several challenges: a small budget; the decades-long exhibit history; and the necessity to be fresh and avoid our own history, since we had also designed the 2000 exhibition.

The concept we developed was the book as “living” object. We explored relationships between books and nature, like the connection of leaves with pages. This generated a “garden of books,” with chirping bird sounds, natural colors and materials. The existing gallery has features we wanted to change; an orange wall was obscured with burlap. The books in the exhibit are small against the space: we added the flowerpots as an intermediate-scale gesture.